


Die For You in Secret

by MoonlightShines (Thatkillervibe)



Category: Stargirl (TV 2020)
Genre: Angst, Character Study, F/M, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-19
Updated: 2020-11-19
Packaged: 2021-03-10 05:00:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,602
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27627842
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thatkillervibe/pseuds/MoonlightShines
Summary: Sometimes Beth wonders if the only real loser at their table is herself.
Relationships: Beth Chapel/Rick Tyler, Yolanda Montez & Courtney Whitmore
Comments: 9
Kudos: 22





	Die For You in Secret

“Oh my god, not David!” 

“Yeah,” Courtney says, unscrewing the cap of her bottle to take a sip with a playful smirk. “He’s really into you.” 

“Really?” Yolanda says again. 

Rick and Beth share a look.

The cafeteria filled with more chatter as people weaved in and out of the line to buy the meal of the day. The loser table sat at the edge near the windows and blue painted wall, although it’s not nearly as forgotten as it used to be. People eyeing their friend group every once in a while. The amount of attention Courtney has received since she created a gymnastics team at Blue Valley High with Yolanda, beating the cheerleaders for best placement at state championships for any sporting event, has made their spot no longer so...loser-ish. 

“I also heard Julian was gonna ask you out after lunch.”

“Whaa—?? _Again?”_

“Can you stop?” Beth snaps, startling the girls. 

“What?” Yolanda tugs on one of her braids anxiously at her tone. Beth is not one to be short with them, ever. 

“What did we do?” 

  
Sometimes Beth wonders if the only real loser that sits at their table is herself. 

Beth stares at her lunchbox, sealing her ziplock bags and shutting the containers, packing up as her words sniped at them, bitter. “It’s not fun listening to you two complain over which new guy is crushing over you every week.” 

Rick gives Beth another side glance. 

Courtney scoots in her chair, speechless at being scolded by Beth like that. “But—”   
  
“I’m sorry that you find it annoying, I’m sure you do,” Beth continued, narrowing her eyes. “To have all these nice guys give you extra attention. To want to spend time with you, because they find you pretty and attractive and worth spending their time with. But I—” 

She’s a little horrified at the way her breath catches, the tears at the corner of her eyes. She refuses to look at either of them—And, then there’s Rick, hearing this too. God. “I’ve _never_ had that. I’ve never—” 

“Nobody ever sees me.” Beth blinks the pain away. She hasn’t even realized it has hurt her so deeply. “I’ve never even been kissed.”

“I’m one of the only black girls in this school. I’m also one of the only ones who’s never been invited to a school dance. Not even in middle school. You think that’s really a coincidence?” 

Yolanda opens her mouth. “I know how it feels to be different from everyone…” 

“Yolanda, you were still popular,” she interrupts.

“No, I wasn’t.” 

“Yes, you were!” she cries. “You were! And you are, now. Again!” 

Courtney lets out a fragile sigh. “I don’t see how being considered popular should matter, Beth. We’re your _friends_.”

Her face crumples at that reply. Her left hand falls, limp against the surface of the lunch table. Even her limbs, immobilized by those words. She shuts down, blocking out whatever Yolanda is trying to say. Rick starts talking too, but Beth is at the threshold for how much more she can take. So many years of talking to people who don’t want to hear her, even the ones who promise they do. Why does Beth think this will actually ever change? She’s as disheartened as exhausted. 

“You know what? You’re right.” Beth takes her lunch and walks out. “I’m sorry. I just—I’m gonna go.” 

  
  


She tightens her hold on her bag and fast walks out of there, brushing off someone’s hand on her arm, the girls pleading for her to stay. Beth did not want to stay. Did not want them to see her have an embarrassing meltdown and cry. She extends her arm out to push the double doors at the caf entrance, walking down the hallway. The worst part, what made her stomach twist into knots of guilt and shame—Is the knowledge that none of this is Courtney or Yolanda’s fault. 

They didn’t _do_ anything. That’s just it. They don’t do anything but be themselves and that’s enough.

Enough to be wanted. And why wouldn’t they be? Smart and kind and talented, with hearts of gold, the both of them.

Beth didn’t do anything either. She wipes at her smudged glasses, smeared with stains of tears with her shirt, head hanging low as she blinked blindly at the dusty, school checkered ground. Her lunch bag collapses weirdly in between the nook of her arm. Reluctantly, she slides down against the metal rows of lockers, pulling out the squashed artisan sandwich she bought herself from the hospital coffee shop her mom worked at last night. Pulling her legs up and plopping her school bag beside her, she fixes her glasses back properly to rest on the bridge of nose, sniffing again as people walk past with snide comments at her, Beth Chapel, sitting and eating alone on the floor. 

She swallows down the mustard and ham roughly, refusing to let it get to her. 

It’s middle school all over again. 

  
  


Beth has nobody to be mad at. That’s the truth of it. And now her best friends thinks Beth doesn’t like them because she couldn’t articulate her feelings better when she could’ve. Her sandwich gets dropped back into her lunch bag as she presses her palm against her face, holding back the building miserable sob. 

“I’ll kiss you.” 

Beth stills, eyes still clenched shut, then scoffs. Did one of the football players overhear her pathetic tirade of feeling unwanted and followed her here for a daily dose of mocking? She could just imagine the viral tiktok, they’d think she’d shoot her head up eagerly only to get laughed in her face. 

“I don’t need your pity kiss.” 

“It’s not pity.”

Beth turns, face softening when she sees that it’s Rick. Of course, he’d say something like that. He cherishes her and hates to see her so personally upset. 

She hadn’t realized she was until she admitted everything she had bottled up inside. It had hurt, that it seemed nobody noticed her the way people naturally would towards Yolanda and Court. No lingering gazes or notes on her locker come to Valentine’s Day. Nobody has ever asked her out or given her the time of day. She was used to this. Beth was used to being invisible. It had come with the years of being the social outcast, the girl with too many words falling out of her mouth and the inability to determine when the conversation was far beyond over before it was too late. 

“You don’t have to.” She lets out a dry laugh. “I didn’t mean to dump all that on you.” 

Rick nods as if he understands. Not that he gets it, but wants her to see he’s listening. He gives her a shy shrug, pushing himself from the wall outside the door to the caf hallway.

“But I want to,” he says, crouching low, stepping into her space. 

“...What do you mean?” 

He reached for her hand, lacing her fingers in his. “I can’t even begin to imagine what it must make you feel. Left out, when wanting in. I’ve spent so long trying to convince myself I’d rather be lonely than making it that way. That was never you.”

The wave of emotions hit her heart again. “There’s nothing wrong with me,” she tells Rick, much like she’d had to tell herself, all the time. “I’m smart and pretty and—I’m a good listener. I’d make a really good girlfriend.” 

“I know.”

Beth can’t help but hug him. She squeezes tight, eyelashes wet against her glasses frame as she breathes in the fabric softener of Rick’s shirt.

“And it’s not that I’m desperate for a high school relationship. I don’t need one,” she explains, a lot more comfortable with freely letting it all out. “But I want that option too, Rick. I want to be wanted.”

“You will be.” His hand is on her back. “You are.”

“When?”

“Right now.”

“How do you know?” she mumbles against him.

“Because _I_ like you, Beth.”

She stills. 

“And even if I didn’t—“ his voice is soft and fond, but she can hear him roll his eyes in spite of himself without even having to look. “—Which I do—There are going to be so many people, begging for you to give them one of your golden smiles or an extra conversation. And you’ll get your options and your dances and your moments. And they’ll all be from people you love, just for you.”

“I—“

“So, you have this option,” he continues, pulling back. Beth looks up, shocked to see the red climbing all over his face. “You don’t have to do anything with it. But it’s here.” He scratches behind his neck. “It’s sort’ve always been since you put me in my place after the first battle with Shiv.” Rick’s arms drop to his sides, giving her room. “And I would’ve said it a lot sooner if I knew you thought you’d never been noticed that way.”

Rick gets up, wiping the dust from the floor on his jeans. He holds out a hand, an eyebrow arched, hopeful. Beth takes it, hauling herself up standing as well.

“Okay?” he asks with a private half-smile.

It takes another moment, only because her thoughts are scattered all over the map she called her brain. The one that was supposed to function. “Okay,” she replies just as soft. 

He doesn’t suggest returning to their table, which she’s grateful for, but the bell rings to signal the end of the lunch period. He squeezes her hand once, then lets it go. 

**Author's Note:**

> It is possible that there was some author projection in the making of this fic.


End file.
